Learning a foreign language

To comprehend a foreign language is an incredibly outstanding experience and a real confidence booster. Language is important to communicate broadly, socialize with people and improve the employability. No one can learn a foreign language without feeling stupid at some point. It is important to get over that feeling in order to successfully learn. People find their own ways to discover the language but basically there are three steps to follow for learning: Be auto-didactic, attend the course and practice the language.

Be autodidactic:
Being an autodidactic is approaching the self-study method without the help of formal education. It can be little challenging with this approach because people will lack discipline and stay negligent in paying attention as they don’t have to stick on to particular timings. Sometimes self-study can be frustrating too if there is a difficulty in understanding a particular topic or context. So for better perception on key concepts, it is important to have enough material for reference instead of limiting to one particular book.

Attend the course:
Attending the course in universities, colleges and schools is one of the effective methods for serious learners as they get exposed to professional way of learning. Whether it is worth attending a class for foreign language depends on the way the course is structured, teaching methodology, motivation and willingness to learn and the amount of time spent in reading.

Practice the language:
Doing the self-study and attending the course becomes mere waste unless the language is used in the daily activity. To become fluent and accurate in speaking, one has to frequently practice by reading various books and talk boldly to others without any hesitation even if it is wrong.

What practices should be adapted while learning foreign language?

Know why you are doing it :
This might sound weird but it is essential to have a reason to keep yourself constantly motivated. Otherwise, the enthusiasm for learning new language might not stay for long time. Some people learn foreign languages if they are traveling to other countries for work or education while others do it for aspirational and intellectual purposes. Whatever the reason might be, learning a new language requires time and dedication.

Have more intensity to learn it quickly:
Low intensity studies are always ineffective as people keep forgetting what they have studied before. So it is important to dive in as deeply as possible keeping the concentration intact to learn the foreign language successfully. Remember, staying focused as much as possible right from the beginning and following the best possible methods will help the person to quickly learn the language.

Don’t be self-conscious about the mistakes :
Willingness to make mistakes is another practice to adapt because if you are conscious about mistakes and hesitate to speak in front of others then there is no point in having the zeal for learning new language. Those who are scared about putting themselves in the embarrassing situation while speaking, would never develop and improve their language at ease.

Listen repeatedly to get more familiarity :
Listening before speaking is the critical aspect of studying any foreign language. Sometimes, it may sound weird and boring to hear unknown language, but listening repeatedly will get the familiarity with words, phrases and sentences. Even though you cannot understand what is being spoken, listening to the language helps the person to become comfortable with pronunciation and inflection.

Set goals to measure progress :
With thousands of words and grammar rules to remember, it may be difficult to learn everything at once. But, planning your learning by integrating both natural and methodical learning approaches and setting goals to analyze the progress and drawbacks will definitely speedup the learning process.